He may not have gotten his supplementary budget approved but the Infrastructure Minister is on the job is investing in repairing the roads affected by flooding.
One such road is the one leading up to the entrance of the Corozal Free Zone. in a post on the Ministry's Facebook, they said that since the proposal has reached the Cabinet, they've decided to fix the road that has been long neglected. But that's not all they're doing. Speaking via zoom video conference today Espat told us that they will be fixing roads in rural communities and as well looking at projects they inherited from the past administration - Coastal Highway included.
Hon. Julius Espat, Minister, Infrastructure, Development, Housing
"The proposal to open up the free zone is just a proposal that was made to Cabinet, the roads there were in a deplorable situation anyway so we're just assisting. What we're trying to do is assist as much constituencies as we can throughout the whole country, we have a situation that we have the disaster of the two floods, so we got some funding to be able to work on those areas. We're also trying to help the sugar roads which is a critical part of our economy. We haven't gotten to that 100% but we're started to do some work in that area."
"We are trying to do as best as we can with this limited funds that we have so we're regraining some of the roads, we are trying to see if we can pave some of the roads, we're looking at the critical areas of Belize, looking at Belize City for example, a critical area is as you come out of Belize City all the way to the Burton Canal, that has so many different holes, so you can't just patch that so we'll probably have to reseal that whole area. We're looking at the exit of Belize also in the Philip Goldson Highway, we're looking at the Sarteneja area road, we are looking at all different roads leading to villages in the rural communities so it's all over the country, down south in Toledo, here in the Cayo District, but the funds that we received are not to make roads first world standards right now, it is to deal with the emergency situation and what we have faced in the Ministry of Infrastructure is that we inherited, well we inherited areas that were abandoned for years and years there was no focus on rural infrastructure."
"Parallel to that, we are still continuing on some of the larger projects that were internationally funded, for example the Coastal Highway is one of those. Portions of the road that leads from Georgeville all the way to the San Antonio Village in the Cayo District. A part of that project entailed the final phase which would lead all the way up to Caracol. That has not been awarded as yet because it is something that Cabinet has to decide if it is their priority right now to do or if they can somehow renegotiate with the internal financiers to see if we can apply that to another important road area."
